The death of James Maher in Batavia on Nov. 7 brought the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan a little bit closer to home for many of us.

Here was a young man -- Maher was 27 -- who served his country with distinction, but was battling demons that apparently lead him to drink heavily and had friends fearing on that crisp Saturday night that James was out somewhere with thoughts of self destruction swimming through his mind.

Maher came to Batavia looking for help. He was one of more than 150,000 returning Iraq and Afghan war veterans who have reported to a clinic seeking help and answers for PTSD (about another 150,000 vets are estimated to suffer from PTSD, but have not sought help).

In the past year, the Jack H. Hisby, Jr. PTSD Center at the VA Hospital in Batavia has treated 557 men and 84 women in its residential clinic. Another 450 veterans are currently in out-patient treatment, according to Dr. Terri Julian, who runs the clinic.

"These patients are our sons our daughters and our bothers and our sisters and our fathers and our mothers and our aunts and our uncles," Julian said when I spoke with her at the clinic last week. "The fact that they come for treatment, we should be honoring them and patting them on the back for doing that. It’s a hard thing to do."

Kenneth Herrmann, along with several of his students from SUNY Brockport, are part of a film on post-war Vietnam that will air at an upcoming festival in Beijing. That film, Going Back, is about "three vets who returned to Vietnam to do humanitarian work," including Herrmann, who is from East Pembroke.

From VietnamNet:

The film includes interviews with Herrmann and in-depth coverage of the Brockport students who are filmed saving the life of a very sick and disabled child, serving lepers at the leper colony in Da Nang Province, assisting the elderly in a nursing home, and engaging 30 disabled kids at a respite programme for Agent Orange disabled children.

The theme, says Herrmann, is one of enhanced Buddhism - making peace with yourself in order to make peace with the war.

"Herrmann's work differs from that of others in that he engages in direct aid," said Steven Emmanuel, the film's producer and a professor of philosophy at Virginia Wesleyan University. "He and his students form a personal connection with the people they serve. We tried to show this in the film."

Clocking in at No. 7 in the Twenty-Five Things That Made Genesee County Famous is Terry Anderson, America's longest-held hostage in the Middle East, whose release set off a media blitz upon the city of Batavia, the likes of which Genesee County had never seen.

Holland Land Office Museum Director Pat Weissend:

On March 16, 1985, former Batavia resident Terry Anderson had just finished a game of tennis in Beirut, Lebanon when three gunmen pulled up in a green Mercedes and kidnapped him. This was day one in a 2,454 day ordeal that captivated the City of Batavia, Genesee County, the United States and the world.

[...]

His captors were a group of Shiite Muslims. During his captivity, Anderson was tortured and beaten. He didn’t know from one day to the next if he would be released or killed. He turned to the Bible for peace and wrote poetry.

After being imprisoned for nearly seven years, Anderson was released on December 4, 1991. After his release he spent a few days in a hospital in Wiesbaden, Germany before returning to the United States. 

For more on Terry Anderson, visit the museum's Web site.

In a side note: This terra cotta sculpture here of Anderson was dropped off at the Holland Land Office Museum last week and should be up on display for folks who want to check it out up close.